


Patron Saint of Toasties

by SenEolas



Category: Duanaire Finn, Finn Cycle, Irish Mythology
Genre: College AU, Depression, Gen, Modern AU, Religion, christianity is a pyramid scheme, overzealous evangelism, patrick needs to stop telling people they're going to hell tbh, there might be some minor heresy here sorry, toasted sandwiches, we've come to talk to you about jeeeeeeeeesus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25580305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenEolas/pseuds/SenEolas
Summary: So Oisín is hungry. And lonely. And apparently desperate enough to text the Christian Union's "Text A Toastie" hotline and ask them Jesus questions for the sole purpose of obtaining a toasted sandwich. Which is how Patrick ends up at his door...
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Patron Saint of Toasties

**Author's Note:**

> okay before we start i want to emphasise that i am not anti-religion (i am in fact a quaker) but omg. why are CU christians the worst. anyway text-a-toastie was a real thing that happened at my uni a lot and my jewish friends used to use it as a chance to ask the CU folks really difficult biblical questions and watch them squirm lol.

He knows it’s a trap.

That doesn’t stop him – Oisín has done stupider things in pursuit of food. Food, and company, because he’s been trying not to admit it, but he’s lonely as hell. Going on a year abroad seemed like a good idea at the time, even though academically he understood that none of his friends would be here when he got back. But _knowing_ that doesn’t compare to _experiencing_ it – realising he’s been left behind, the only one of the old band still treading these not-so-hallowed halls.

That’s partly his fault for taking an extra year to get back, though. Travelling with Niamh was another thing that seemed more sensible when he planned it than it does in hindsight, now that he’s broke and lonely and she’s a world away and he’s sitting here like a loser in his room.

And he doesn’t have any groceries, because it’s hard to motivate himself to buy food without Diarmait coming over to steal his snacks, or Finn to cajole him into an actual meal, or Caílte to drag him bodily to the shops to make sure he consumes A Vegetable, Occasionally. There’s a sad packet of crisps on his desk, made mostly crumbs by its sojourn at the bottom of his bag earlier, and half a bar of chocolate in the cupboard that he was trying to use to motivate himself to get through his assignment (it hasn’t worked). So he’s hungry _and_ lonely, which is a terrible combination. It makes him susceptible. Ready to fall right into the waiting trap.

 _Text a toastie._ They do this every year, the Christian Union, and his friends have always warned him off it. Not because the toasties are bad (by all accounts they’re half-decent), but because if you want one, you’ll have to suffer an overly-earnest CU member evangelising at you for fifteen solid minutes.

And sure, they probably mean well. Probably. Maybe? Oisín has his doubts, mostly because he once witnessed one of his friends refuse their invitation on the basis that she was Jewish, only for them to respond, “Oh, that’s okay, we can fix that.”

Yeah. He’s kept his distance from the CU since then.

He’s sure some of them are probably fine, but their activities are a little bit heavy on the conversion (and strangely light on the redistribution of wealth, revolutionary forgiveness, and general establishment-subverting activism he feels would be a better approach). Regardless of whether or not you have any interest in being converted. Regardless of whether you have a faith of your own that you’re quite happy with, thank you very much.

But. He really wants a goddamn toastie. Maybe he can just take the sandwich and shut the door before they can start telling him he’s going to hell. It can’t be that bad. Usually they send the freshers and he bets he can intimidate some teenage Jesus freak into leaving him alone, ideally after relinquishing his tasty gift.

Probably Oisín is a bad person.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, though, to talk to somebody. He’s been moping alone in his room for most of the past fortnight, regretting not taking the chance to befriend younger students when he had the chance, feeling a thousand years old compared to most of the others in halls, wishing he’d managed to find a house share so he wasn’t surrounded by teenagers. Maybe whoever they send will actually be willing to have an interesting conversation with him, and he’d have company for a few minutes _as well as_ a toastie.

He’s coped with worse than a bit of over-enthusiastic evangelism. He can do this.

(See: desperate. Walking straight into a trap and trying to convince himself it’s on purpose. This is what happens when he’s left alone. He should’ve listened to the others and skipped the year abroad.)

(He didn’t even get to see them graduate. He saw the photos on Finn’s Facebook page and they were all there, except him.)

(Not that he’s bitter.)

He texts his toastie order.

Then he reads the Facebook event again, realises he was meant to put a Jesus question in the message as well, and sends a second message: _if god loves us why am I the only one left. shitload of cheese, please. room ws19._

He waits.

He questions his decision.

His stomach rumbles.

It had better be a damn good toastie.

*

Forty minutes later, just when he’s about to give up and make himself a Depression Meal of the crisp crumbs and chocolate bar, there’s a sharp, precise rap at the door. Sounds like somebody who has knocked on a lot of doors.

 _Probably has,_ he thinks to himself. _Probably goes round the neighbourhood trying to talk to people about Jeeeeeeeesus._

He opens the door.

There’s a boy standing there with a blinding smile (seriously, his teeth are painfully white), a crisp buttoned shirt (not white, at least; blue), and embarrassingly middle-aged shoes. His jeans look like they’ve been ironed. He’s holding two cheese toasties. “Hi! I’m Patrick. You texted our toastie line, right? Sorry for the delay. I got lost trying to find your room.”

Oisín blinks. “Two?” Then he remembers his duplicate message. “Ah shit. But I only asked you one Jesus question.”

Patrick smiles. “Then you can ask me another one and I’ll give you the other. Or I’ll eat it.”

He doesn’t think he has another Jesus question. But he is pretty hungry. “Uhh. How about you answer the first one and then I can, like, ask follow-up questions, or something.”

He can tell immediately that this is the right thing to say from Patrick’s perspective, which means it’s objectively the wrong thing to say, as he has shown an unusual amount of willingness to be evangelised and will now have to suffer through Excessive Jesus.

“Great! Can I come in?”

 _No, I thought we’d do this in the hallway, so that everyone in the building knows I’m lonely enough to talk to a fucking missionary._ “Sure. Wouldn’t want to leave the patron saint of toasted sandwiches out in the corridor.”

His room’s a mess. He shoves a pile of clothes off the chair and offers it to Patrick. The boy seems to be holding his toasties to ransom; certainly he makes no move to actually _give_ them to Oisín, and his hunger’s getting more intense by the moment.

“So,” says Patrick, taking out his phone. “Your question was…” His smile falters. “Oh.” Immediately the beaming, hopeful look is replaced by something softer, sympathy bordering on condescension. “You wanted to know why, if God loves us, you’re the only one left.”

Oisín shrugs. “Yeah, I mean, like, it’s kinda shit, isn’t it? All my friends are gone. I keep getting up to go and call for them and then I realise they’re not here anymore and it’s just me. It’s hard to make myself do anything when nobody’s expecting me, nobody will notice if I don’t turn up, and I feel… abandoned.”

Patrick reaches out and pats his hand. It’s a distinctly awkward experience. “That sounds very difficult,” he says. “Were your friends religious?”

“Definitely not.”

“So this is a new direction for you. That’s not unusual, in a time of transition like this, when you’re trying to work out where you belong.”

Okay, he knew he was letting himself in for evangelism – not for therapy. “You could put it like that.” He shrugs. “It just seems weird that you lot preach about a loving God when I feel so fucking sad all the time. Like. What kind of a creator is that? Why didn’t he plan that better?” Shit. Too honest.

He looks away, towards the toasties, and Patrick pushes one of the paper plates towards him. He takes it, grateful both for the food and the opportunity to avoid looking at the other student.

“It’s an age-old problem,” Patrick says. “Why does pain exist? Why does suffering exist? Nobody has all the answers, Oisín.”

Oisín bites into the toasted sandwich and feels the melted cheese spread across his tongue. _Almost_ worth the wait. Not sure it’s worth the heart-to-heart. “I thought that was kind of your deal. Helping people find the meaning of life, or whatever.”

God, what he’d give to feel like all of this had a meaning.

It occurs to Oisín at this point that he might, possibly, be depressed. But that seems like a problem for his future self to deal with. He squashes that thought back down and goes right back to ignoring it.

“We can help you find a path towards meaning,” says Patrick earnestly, “but that doesn’t mean your troubles all go away. It means you don’t have to handle them alone. Because you’re not alone, Oisín. God is always with you, no matter how lonely you feel.”

He wonders whether he could jump out of the window before Patrick realised he was trying to make a break for it and stopped him – or worse, tried to rescue him from what he’d almost certainly perceive as a cry for help. Shit.

“Yeah, whatever,” he says. “I’m… not sure I believe in God.” A polite way of phrasing his fairly certain atheism.

“That’s okay,” says Patrick, and laughs at his look of surprise. “I mean, no, you’re going to hell, but what I meant was, God’s still there, whether or not you believe in him. It’s about whether or not you reach out towards that presence, or whether you keep walking alone in the darkness.”

“Hell,” repeats Oisín, ignoring the rest of that.

“Yeah. Sucks, but… He is the way, the truth, and the life and all that.” Patrick gives him an encouraging smile. “He wants to know you, Oisín. He loves you.”

He gets up. Walks to the window so that his back’s to Patrick. “Thanks for the toastie,” he says. “You can go now.”

“But I haven’t answered your question.”

“That’s okay. You said you didn’t have all the answers. I forgive you.” He wants the kid to go away and take his hell with him, take his damnation with him, take his love with him. He wants to go to Caílte’s room and tell him about the absurdity of this whole conversation – or Diarmait’s, or Finn’s, just _somebody_ who would be able to laugh with him about this. But they’re not here. They’re all living their lives and managing perfectly well without him and he’s _alone_.

“Oisín,” says Patrick, more gently. “You shouldn’t have to be alone with your grief.”

“Grief?”

“You lost your friends.”

Oisín scoffs. “Yeah, because they graduated, because I did a damn year abroad and then maybe took an extra year out to travel with a girl I met there and they all moved on without me and I came back and there was nothing left for me here. It’s my own fault.”

There’s a momentary pause as Patrick takes in this information. “So they’re not… dead?”

“Not as far as I know. Diarmait might be. He’s good at getting himself into trouble. But no.” He turns. “You thought I asked that question because everyone I knew was _dead_? And you still started talking about hell?”

“I…”

“So if I’d told you all my friends were dead and they didn’t believe in God you’d tell me they were all in hell, right?”

He has the hollow satisfaction of seeing Patrick look wrong-footed. “Well, I probably wouldn’t lead with that, but—”

“If all my friends were in hell,” asks Oisín, “why would I try and avoid going there? I mean, I don’t want to go to heaven if none of my friends are going to be around.”

“But—”

“I’m just saying.” He turns back to the window. “Seems like a shitty way of trying to get people to convert, in my opinion. You should lead with all the badass socialist Jesus stuff and save the hellfire for later.”

“I’m not sure you could really describe Jesus as a socialist,” says Patrick nervously.

“Well, what do I know, I’m just a heathen.” He turns and points to the other toastie. “Do I get that now? Or do I have to ask you more Jesus questions?”

He might be imagining it, but he thinks Patrick looks slightly relieved that he’s steering the conversation away from interrogating his belief in hell. “You can have it,” says the kid, then bravely adds, “but I still think you’re grieving. Even if they’re not dead, you’re coping with a loss of something you were relying on for emotional support. You’ve lost your community, you feel alone, you’re adrift.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“So what are you going to do about it?”

He points his toastie crust at Patrick. “I’m going to stay in my room and be sad until I run out of fucks to give, and then I’m going to go outside and see what happens next.” It’s a pretty decent toastie. Maybe not as good as the first one, but that’s partly because it’s going cold. Too much talking. Not enough toastie-eating.

“You should come to church on Sunday,” says Patrick, because _of_ _course he fucking does._

“No,” says Oisín, because that’s really the only answer he could possibly have given to that.

“Okay, well, then, we have a house group on Thursdays, it would be a chance to meet—”

“Patrick, the kind of people I would meet at a CU house group are not the kind of people I want to meet, thanks.” Is he being mean? Possibly he’s being mean. He can’t help feeling that the CU is an evangelical pyramid scheme, though, recruiting people to recruit more people to recruit more people…

 _Holy shit Christianity is a pyramid scheme,_ thinks Oisín, and then concludes that he should probably keep this thought to himself, because Patrick is already looking a little crestfallen, although he hasn’t given up yet.

“Fine,” says Patrick. “You won’t meet anyone else, but you’ve met me. And you know this place a lot better than I do, as evidenced by the fact that I got lost three times trying to find this room, so tomorrow, I’ll come round and you can take me on a tour.”

“A tour?”

“Of the campus. Of the town. You can tell me about your friends, and I can learn to navigate.”

Oisín must be pretty damn lonely, because he actually considers it. “Maybe,” he says. “ _If_ you bring me food. And if we don’t talk about Jesus.”

Patrick cocks his head, considering him. “Okay. I won’t talk about Jesus unless you ask me to. And you’ll tell me everything you know about the area, and I’ll bring snacks. Deal?”

Eh. What the hell. For a zealous little missionary, Patrick seems nice enough, he supposes. Beats lying in bed staring at the ceiling and drifting in and out of grey sleep, that’s for sure. “Fine,” he says. “You have a deal.”

Definitely a trap.

But he got toasties out of it, so Oisín’s counting that as a win.

**Author's Note:**

> like literally that jewish comment is verbatim from a friend of mine's experience but ANYWAY 
> 
> thanks for reading yet another niche college au of mine, maybe i will write more fianaigecht fics in the future! i'm mostly an ulster cycle ho but you know, i can be versatile. also no i do not edit these fics. i write them at midnight and i post them when i get bored of writing them. if you got far enough to be reading this note it clearly worked so i'm not apologising
> 
> come say hi: trans-cuchulainn on tumblr or @seneolas on twitter


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